Audience measurement

Consumer & Audience Targeting

Reputation, PR monitoring and evaluation

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The Brit Awards 2018: Social Winners

How did the 2018 BRITs engage Twitter more successfully than any other broadcast so far this year?

The BRIT Awards rocketed to the top of our Broadcast Leaderboard for the year so far, with 229.0K Tweets posted by 94.3K Unique Authors between 19:30 and 22:50 on Wednesday. The engagement rate also reached an impressive 10.3 Tweeters per 1,000 viewers too, which is the highest rate we’ve monitored of any broadcast since some of the dramatic Christmas Specials in December.

We’ve taken a closer look at what helped this year’s BRIT awards motivate viewers to take to Twitter in real time:

The three peaks of engagement all focused on male artists this year

Although the winner of the night was Stormzy, beating Ed Sheeran and Liam Gallagher in the Best British Male category, and claiming the British Album Of The Year award, it was Kendrick Lamar’s performance that Tweeters couldn’t stop talking about. He instigated the peak minute of activity during the show, with 4.6K Tweets received within 60 seconds, with 26.5% of posts displaying audience criticism of the decision to censor the majority of the song.

Stormzy’s triumph didn’t go unnoticed on Twitter either – his victory marked the second biggest minute of activity around the BRITs with 1.9K Tweets posted at 20:32. Attention around Liam Gallagher’s guest performance and tribute to Manchester only just fell shy of the buzz around Stormzy, sparking 1.8K Tweets.

Stormzy’s powerful freestyle and awards success helped him to dominate social engagement

As well as having the most mentioned handle, Stormzy was referenced more than anyone else, appearing in 23.8K Tweets. However, Styles and Little Mix were overtaken by Kendrick Lamar and Liam Gallagher when looking at wider mentions than handle tags, with Kendrick featuring in 10.0K Tweets, and Liam in 8.2K.

The prominence of male acts in Twitter activity around the BRITs did not stem from a skew in Tweeters’ gender

Female accounts penned slightly more posts about the BRITs across Wednesday, but only by 7.6K Tweets. Two thirds of the 309.0K Tweets posted across the whole day yesterday came from users younger than 35, indicative of the fan bases of the nominees. In terms of location, 13.6% of all Tweets posted about the BRIT awards came from Greater London, with 6.4% (or 8.0K) posted from Scotland, and the North West and South East of England each contributing 6% of the total activity.

Praise and celebratory feelings around the British music landscape drove consistent engagement

The BRITs left Tweeters satisfied as 30.6% of Tweets contained purely Positive Sentiment, with Admiration detected in 74.6K Tweets. This suggests that appreciation and praise can be just as important in inspiring online engagement about TV as drama, outrage and debates.